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Amazon is likely stats blinded: their internal metrics say "all good", so they ignore the stories people are telling as anecdotes without ever doing the analysi

Amazon is likely stats blinded: their internal metrics say "all good", so they ignore the stories people are telling as anecdotes without ever doing the analysis on how often those "anecdotes" happen. Further, that their stats are ungrounded (not tied to any hard-to-attack real world tests) and fail to capture data which would demonstrate the issue. I believe the FBA and FMA teams are a fundamental blunder opposed to Amazon's core values (and the business model they espouse), and that while the people on them are clever, they're not very prudent. I think that the idea could be salvaged with some genuine mea culpa and revamping of FBA/FMA systems. I just don't think anyone at Amazon with the political capital to do so understands or acknowledges the issue. Honestly, Amazon should just send someone on the team out with $50,000 in $50 giftcards to one of the shopping centers in downtown Seattle and hand them out to anyone who orders something on Amazon for them (on Amazon's dime; shipped to Amazon HQ). Will you get a disproportionately high number of bad purchases? Yep. But that's sort of the point: isn't it a problem if a large fraction of 1,000 people know how to get bad purchases out of regular items, but you still operate your store that way?

dreamcompiler 10y ago
This is one of the most insightful comments I've read on HN and it explains the factors at play when a big company won't respond to issues the outside world can plainly see are problems: The stats are good, the stats measure the wrong things, and whoever inside the company first suggests that a change is needed will probably limit their career. It's also a good explanation of Apple's non-response to their increasingly poor software quality and their de-facto abandonment of the content-creator market.
- noir_lord 10y ago
  It's a good comment but anyone who has worked for really large retailers has experience of been on the side of "This policy is really stupid, you are pissing customers off!" and head office standing with it's fingers in it's ears going NerNerNer can't hear you, figures all look good from here.
bambax 10y ago
From the outside, Amazon projects an image of utter-efficiency and professionalism, but the reality is different. I've been a seller for about 6 months (in Europe) and their systems are quite bad. When you call support, most of the time the person on the phone, while very polite and "competent sounding", gives you advice that does the opposite of what they say it will do. When you point it to them they say "hmm, let me check" or "I'll get back to you" and then you talk to an "expert" who many times isn't sure either of what to do. The problem is not that support is incompetent; the problem is nobody's sure how the system actually works, because it's too complex with too many layers added on top of one another. I really think the system was built for a much smaller operation with fewer sellers, and it is now stretching beyond capacity. They have a huge team of people maintaining it but that only goes so far.
nkrisc 10y ago
Or perhaps they do know exactly how bad the problem is and have decided that fixing it isn't worth it.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  I had considered that, but that seemed the less likely scenario: that they'd intentionally let their business get damaged, rather than having issues that most large corporations face. I mean, they clearly don't have a handle on a wide variety of bad actors in their ecosystem, but keep putting out awkward attempts at solutions. This suggests they're trying to fix perceived problems, but are avoiding the core of the problem because they either don't see it or don't have the political will to fix it.

dreamcompiler 10y ago

This is one of the most insightful comments I've read on HN and it explains the factors at play when a big company won't respond to issues the outside world can plainly see are problems: The stats are good, the stats measure the wrong things, and whoever inside the company first suggests that a change is needed will probably limit their career. It's also a good explanation of Apple's non-response to their increasingly poor software quality and their de-facto abandonment of the content-creator market.

noir_lord 10y ago
It's a good comment but anyone who has worked for really large retailers has experience of been on the side of "This policy is really stupid, you are pissing customers off!" and head office standing with it's fingers in it's ears going NerNerNer can't hear you, figures all look good from here.

bambax 10y ago

From the outside, Amazon projects an image of utter-efficiency and professionalism, but the reality is different. I've been a seller for about 6 months (in Europe) and their systems are quite bad. When you call support, most of the time the person on the phone, while very polite and "competent sounding", gives you advice that does the opposite of what they say it will do. When you point it to them they say "hmm, let me check" or "I'll get back to you" and then you talk to an "expert" who many times isn't sure either of what to do. The problem is not that support is incompetent; the problem is nobody's sure how the system actually works, because it's too complex with too many layers added on top of one another. I really think the system was built for a much smaller operation with fewer sellers, and it is now stretching beyond capacity. They have a huge team of people maintaining it but that only goes so far.

nkrisc 10y ago

Or perhaps they do know exactly how bad the problem is and have decided that fixing it isn't worth it.

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
I had considered that, but that seemed the less likely scenario: that they'd intentionally let their business get damaged, rather than having issues that most large corporations face. I mean, they clearly don't have a handle on a wide variety of bad actors in their ecosystem, but keep putting out awkward attempts at solutions. This suggests they're trying to fix perceived problems, but are avoiding the core of the problem because they either don't see it or don't have the political will to fix it.